Electrochemical reduction of CO₂ using palladium modified boron-doped diamond electrodes: Enhancing the production of CO

In recent years, boron-doped diamond (BDD) has been utilized as an electrode for the electrochemical reduction of CO₂, and several reports have been published on this. The wide potential window of BDD enables the hydrogen evolution reaction, which competes with CO₂ reduction, to be suppressed. On the other hand, the high overpotential is still a problem. We attempted to overcome this problem by depositing metal on the BDD electrode. Pd metal was chosen to modify the surface of the BDD electrode (PdBDD). Employing this electrode at a lower potential of-1.6 V vs. Ag/AgCl, we increased the production of CO (53.3% faradaic efficiency) from the reduction of CO₂. We present various attempts made to improve the CO production.